12 Jyotirlinga Location List: State, District and Nearest River

A location-first list of the twelve Jyotirlingas with town, district, state and the nearest river or landform, plus a clear explanation of the disputed sites at Vaidyanath and Nageshwar and the geography links that matter for Prelims.

All 12 Jyotirlingas and exactly where they are

The twelve Jyotirlingas are spread across seven states, from Somnath on the Saurashtra coast of Gujarat to Rameswaram on Pamban Island at the southern tip of Tamil Nadu. Maharashtra holds three of the undisputed twelve, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat hold two each, and Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Jharkhand hold one each. The table below gives the town, district, state and the nearest river or landform for each.

Read the last column carefully. Most people memorise the twelve names and the states, then lose marks when a question comes at the same temple from the direction of a river, a hill range or a heritage site.

Jyotirlinga	Town or site	District	State	Nearest river or landform
Somnath	Prabhas Patan, near Veraval	Gir Somnath	Gujarat	Arabian Sea coast, Saurashtra
Mallikarjuna	Srisailam	Nandyal (earlier Kurnool)	Andhra Pradesh	Right bank of the Krishna, Nallamala hills
Mahakaleshwar	Ujjain	Ujjain	Madhya Pradesh	Shipra river
Omkareshwar	Mandhata island	Khandwa	Madhya Pradesh	Narmada river
Kedarnath	Kedarnath	Rudraprayag	Uttarakhand	Mandakini river, Garhwal Himalaya, about 3,583 m
Bhimashankar	Bhorgiri, near Khed	Pune	Maharashtra	Source region of the Bhima, Sahyadri
Kashi Vishwanath	Varanasi	Varanasi	Uttar Pradesh	Left bank of the Ganga
Trimbakeshwar	Trimbak	Nashik	Maharashtra	Source of the Godavari, Brahmagiri hill
Vaidyanath	Deoghar	Deoghar	Jharkhand	Chota Nagpur plateau fringe (claim disputed)
Nageshwar	Near Dwarka	Devbhumi Dwarka	Gujarat	Gulf of Kutch coast (claim disputed)
Ramanathaswamy	Rameswaram	Ramanathapuram	Tamil Nadu	Pamban Island, between Palk Bay and Gulf of Mannar
Grishneshwar	Verul, near Ellora	Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar	Maharashtra	Beside the Ellora caves, Deccan trap country

The pattern behind the scatter

The twelve are not randomly placed, and seeing the clusters is far easier than memorising twelve separate dots.

Three sit in the Deccan of Maharashtra: Bhimashankar and Trimbakeshwar in the Western Ghats, Grishneshwar inland near Ellora. Two sit in the Narmada and Malwa belt of Madhya Pradesh: Omkareshwar on the river itself, Mahakaleshwar a little north at Ujjain. Two sit on the Gujarat coast, Somnath in the south of Saurashtra and Nageshwar near Dwarka in the west.

That leaves four outliers. Kedarnath is the only Himalayan one. Kashi Vishwanath is the only one on the Ganga plain. Mallikarjuna is the only one in the Krishna basin, and Rameswaram is the southernmost, sitting on an island rather than the mainland. Vaidyanath at Deoghar is the only eastern site.

If you can draw those five clusters on a blank India outline, you effectively know the location list.

The two locations people argue about

Two of the twelve have rival claimants, and this is where most online lists quietly disagree with each other.

Vaidyanath is most widely identified with Baba Baidyanath Dham at Deoghar in Jharkhand, the site of the Shravani Mela. Parli Vaijnath in Beed district of Maharashtra claims the same identity, and Baijnath in Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh is sometimes added to the argument.

Nageshwar is usually placed near Dwarka in Devbhumi Dwarka district of Gujarat, associated with the Daruka forest of the legend. Aundha Nagnath in Hingoli district of Maharashtra and Jageshwar near Almora in Uttarakhand both press a claim.

For an objective test, go with Deoghar and Dwarka. That is the mainstream reading and the one standard sources follow. Just remember that if you count the disputed Maharashtra sites, Maharashtra ends up with five, which is where the widely repeated claim that Maharashtra has the most Jyotirlingas comes from.

The geography link is what actually gets tested

A question rarely asks you to list twelve temples. It comes sideways.

Trimbakeshwar is the source of the Godavari at Brahmagiri hill, which makes it a river-source question as much as a temple question. Bhimashankar sits near the headwaters of the Bhima, a major right-bank tributary of the Krishna, and also lends its name to the Bhimashankar Wildlife Sanctuary, known for the Indian giant squirrel. Omkareshwar stands on Mandhata island in the Narmada, near a major dam on the same river.

Mahakaleshwar at Ujjain is on the Shipra, and Ujjain is one of the four Kumbh Mela sites, where the fair is called Simhastha. Mallikarjuna at Srisailam overlooks the Krishna inside the Nagarjunsagar-Srisailam Tiger Reserve, the largest tiger reserve in the country by area. Grishneshwar stands next to the Ellora caves, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

That is the useful layer. A temple name on its own is weak recall. A temple attached to a river, a hill range, a protected area or a heritage listing is recall you can use in four different question formats.

Fixing these on a map in one sitting

Do this once, properly, and you will not need to revisit it more than twice a year.

The mistake is reading the list repeatedly instead of producing it. Reading feels productive and leaves almost nothing behind. Plotting from memory, getting three wrong, and correcting those three is what sticks.

Print a blank India political outline and mark all twelve from memory. Check against the table above and circle only your errors.
Now overlay rivers on the same sheet: Godavari at Trimbak, Bhima near Bhimashankar, Narmada at Omkareshwar, Shipra at Ujjain, Ganga at Varanasi, Krishna at Srisailam, Mandakini at Kedarnath.
Write the seven states with their counts in a single line and say it aloud: Maharashtra 3, Madhya Pradesh 2, Gujarat 2, and one each in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand.
Note the two disputed pairs separately, on the same sheet, so a trick option does not surprise you.
Redo the blank plot after a week without looking at anything.

FAQs

1. Which state has the most Jyotirlingas?

Maharashtra, with Bhimashankar, Trimbakeshwar and Grishneshwar among the undisputed twelve. If the disputed claims of Parli Vaijnath and Aundha Nagnath are counted, the state's tally rises to five, which is why some sources say Maharashtra has five.

2. Are all 12 Jyotirlingas located in India?

Yes. All twelve are in India, spread across Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Jharkhand.

3. Which Jyotirlinga is the northernmost and which is the southernmost?

Kedarnath in Rudraprayag district of Uttarakhand is the northernmost and the highest, at roughly 3,583 metres in the Garhwal Himalaya. Ramanathaswamy at Rameswaram, on Pamban Island in Tamil Nadu, is the southernmost.

4. Which Jyotirlinga is nearest a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

Grishneshwar at Verul in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district of Maharashtra stands right beside the Ellora caves, which are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

5. Is Kedarnath both a Jyotirlinga and a Char Dham site?

Yes. Kedarnath is one of the twelve Jyotirlingas and also one of the four shrines of the Chota Char Dham of Uttarakhand, along with Yamunotri, Gangotri and Badrinath. It is separately counted among the Panch Kedar as well.

6. Which Jyotirlingas are located at the source of a river?

Trimbakeshwar in Nashik district marks the source of the Godavari at Brahmagiri hill, and Bhimashankar in Pune district lies in the source region of the Bhima river in the Sahyadri.